Theo knew that Blaise wouldn't have minded and would stay here with him all day if that's what he needed him to do; he knew it to be true and Blaise's willingness to do that for him made something in his chest twist. He was more uncomfortable with his own tears than Blaise was at seeing them, but the near-silent offer of comfort from his friend was effective in Theo's lack of experience with it; he couldn't recognise it as permission to indulge in what his father would have called a childish and shameful display though, and the most Blaise's strong silent presence did for him was make it easier for Theo to gather all the scattered bits of himself together again. He pushed his free hand against his mouth to stifle the hiccups until he'd stopped making them, the poison in him not so much lanced and cried out as stuffed back inside with all the other secrets stuck festering inside himself.
He reached back tentative and unsure to not so much take hold of Blaise's hand as just tangle his fingers with his friend's a little, hand holding for comfort also foreign to him. It felt strange to be aware of his index finger though, as though the bone fragment that Blaise had taken just made a mockery of his true finger. "I, I can't." he confessed, his voice strangled with that same irrational instability that had taken him over before. "He's there when I sleep, that's when he comes. If I stay awake it's better, if I stay awake. I can't brace myself, if, when, if I'm asleep... and you, you can't be here, for that, you can't, I won't let anything happen to you." he stammered, that last promise coming out fierce if no more clear than anything else he'd said.